[blablablame]

Do you do any sports? Tennis/golf clubs are great for meeting people. Gyms as well. You can't expect to have a new bff in 2 days, but you will meet people from all walks of life and maybe it will click with one or two.

As for the talking part, I think people need to be good listeners, but at start, people need to be great storytellers. If you have a story or two about you/something, that is funny and you can intrigue people, you can be sure folks will stick around...

'Regarding the recent crime wave, when I was a teenager and I went camping with some friends and we noticed we ran out of toilet paper while one of us was on the can... not having a lot of options, we had to resort to crime... we went around trailers..... etc'

Seems harmless enough, but its a story I tell a lot with a bit more details and pauses, takes about 5 minutes, makes people laugh (we were caught stealing the Toilet paper) and opens up folks.

If you have a few funny real stories to tell, you will always find engagement from folks much nicer than 'ohh so what do you do? any kids? etc' that most people end up doing